Ubuntu Karmic Koala 9.10 Beta was released today and includes the previously mentioned:

-Updated Human GDM theme, Humanity icons and new log-out screen
-New wallpapers and GDM theme - The gdm 2.28 login manager is a complete rewrite compared to the version in earlier Ubuntu releases, permitting a more integrated login experience.

With the recent news of beta releases from Fedora and Ubuntu, I decided to see how far the graphics support has come. So, I downloaded live ISO images of Fedora 11 Beta and Ubuntu 9.04 "Jaunty Jackalope" Beta and created bootable USB images with FUSBi.

The final release version of Ubuntu 9.10, codenamed "Karmic Koala" won't come out until the end of the month but already tons of people are testing the development version, which is currently in Beta.

The Ubuntu project has released the first beta of Ubuntu Linux 9.10 (Karmic Koala), which has already been favorably previewed, especially for its fast boot time. Based on Linux 2.6.31, Karmic Koala offers GNOME 2.28 and Ext4 as defaults, and adds "cloud" features and improved installation.

Ubuntu 9.10 is the upcoming version of the Ubuntu operating system. The common name given to this release from the time of its early development was “Karmic Koala”.

Yes, after six months down the road, it's time to gear up for the newly born Ubuntu baby again. This time, Ubuntu 9.10, codenamed Karmic Koala, will be officially released on 29th Oct 2009.

Jigdo, if you’re not familiar, takes a current Ubuntu image and compares its contained packages with the packages within an updated image (ie; alpha vs beta, beta vs RC, RC vs final). Using this method you’re only downloading the packages that have *changed* between images and not the entire image again.

Even though Ubuntu’s servers were absolutely hammered today, I was able to download and test out the latest 9.10 Karmic Koala beta.

Yesterday I installed the Ubuntu 9.10 “Karmic Koala” Beta release by way of the desktop (Live-CD) based installer. The installation was very clean and polished. It has been a while since I’ve used a graphical installer and I am pleased with the improvements that I found.